Indigenous Language Usage in a Bilingual Interface: Transaction Log Analysis of the Niupepa Web Site

Abstract

In this chapter we investigate the extent and characteristics of use of the Maori language, the indigenous language of Aotearoa (New Zealand), in a large bilingual Web site. We used transaction log analysis to investigate whether Maori was utilised by users of the Web site and how usage characteristics differed between users of Maori and users of the more commonly spoken English language. We found that Maori language was used in one quarter of all active sessions, and that in these sessions users were more likely to browse the Web site, whereas users working in the non-indigenous English were more likely to use the search facility. We also identified a new category of user of bilingual Web sites: the bilingual user.